Things that hang from people's mirrors

My parents bought me a little plush Pikachu, about five inches tall but very fat, with a cord attached to the top. I fastened it to my rear-view mirror, which provided maximum cuteness with minimum loss of visibility. One day, a friend of mine who was into anime was riding in my car, and noticed the Pikachu almost immediately. "I think I've seen this before. Is this the Pikachu that squeaks when you squeeze it?" he asks.

A couple of years ago, Italian car owners started hanging CDs from their rearview mirrors, as if compelled by some crazy fashion.

The first time I saw this, I opened my mental notebook labeled "stupid human tricks" and wondered why your average driver would trade a nice, pine shaped air freshener with a 11.5 cm disk of iridescent aluminium.

Relax. Streets are full of dangers. A properly-oriented CD can block a sizeable part of your field of view, preventing you from seeing at least some of those dangers. It's a well-known fact that the less perils you see, the more peaceful you feel (this is known as the Joo-Janta effect).

Entertainment. Our brains have evolved from those of small furry animals. From an animal point of view, a moving object might mean that food is coming. Consider your average cat: he is far more interested in a squeaky, fast-moving mouse rather than in a 12-ton semi slowly approaching from the wronglane.

Masochism. What, you still have to fulfill your headaches quota for this month? Don't worry, a shiny object flashing brain-splitting reflections of the sun is guaranteed to give you the mother of all migraines.

Truth is far stranger: all those people were trying to fool speed traps.

I learned about the fourth reason by watching the news on TV (during particularly slow summers, when there are no wars or murders, Italian networks usually pad the newscast with "curious" items).

The reporter interviewed a policeman who debunked the urban legend about CDs, and even showed some tests where CD-protected speeding cars were caught by the Lidar.

The interview tickled some conspiracy theorists, who reasoned that "if they take time to debunk it, it must be true". Maybe they visualized a Lidar gun softly broadcasting the latest Spice Girls hit, to the utter bafflement of the policemen. The percentage of "protected" cars soared.

A couple of years later this foolish practice disappeared, after reaching absurd peaks: I received an e-mail with the photo of a truck whose rear window was literally framed by CDs.